WEBVTT

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Narrator:
Would you be comfortable

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living in a house that someone
else had the key to?

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What if an underground tunnel
led into it from a public park

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or its windows could
never quite close all the way?

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Would you trust it with your
safety and your privacy?

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The internet is that house.

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This is not to say
never go into the house

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but rather
you should know the hazards

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before you store
all of your valuables there

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and do what you can
to protect them.

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So why is it insecure,

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and why can't we just
fortify it until it's safe?

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Well, first of all, the internet
was not originally built

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to be what it is today.

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It's like someone decided

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to expand a shoebox
into a skyscraper.

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The internet
originally developed

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when computers were huge

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and so expensive to own
that only universities,

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big businesses,
and a few governments had them.

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The point originally
was to let

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these massive supercomputers
talk to each other.

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And as soon
as two computers could send

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information back and forth,
we had a network.

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The network gradually grew

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until personal
computers emerged in the 1980s,

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and then it exploded.

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Soon people were not
just talking to each other

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but also exchanging money,
playing games, reading news,

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shopping, and doing everything

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we associate
with the internet today.

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Other devices started
talking to the network, too--

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phones and cars
and refrigerators and elevators

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and power plants,
and much, much more.

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[train whistle blows]

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But the ease of all those
devices talking to each other

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came at a price: security.

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One computer could send
another instructions

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to delete everything on it

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or take it over.

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We call these viruses
and malware.

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Or one person could steal
another's identity

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by guessing, cracking,
or extracting a password.

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Vulnerabilities such as these
will never completely go away

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because they're built into the
internet's very architecture.

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Criminals use them
to steal billions of dollars;

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governments use them
for surveillance;

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and hacktivists use them to
further their political goals.

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Between 2004 and 2013,

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over one billion records
of personal information

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were stolen or leaked

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through data breaches
of major organizations.

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As a thought experiment,

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let's imagine what a perfectly
secure internet might look like.

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Users would not be allowed
to download or install anything

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onto their computers.

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All internet traffic
would be monitored and regulated

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by bots and humans,
massively limiting

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the number of websites
you could visit.

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In order to log onto a website,

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you'd have to type in

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a 100-character password,

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submit a genetic sample,

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and whistle a tune.

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The servers
that hold data would be kept

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in heavily armed fortresses...

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on the moon.

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And even with
all these safeguards in place,

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some clever hacker would almost
certainly still find a way in.

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The good news is
even with our flawed internet,

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there are simple things you
can do to protect yourself,

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and there are
a lot of people

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committed to making
the internet more secure.